The Iraq War: Lessons Learned?
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058231181291 |
| Author | Chris Featherstone |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
36POLITICAL INSIGHT•JUNE 2023
In March 2003, military forces led by
the US and the UK invaded Iraq. The
Iraq War was ostensibly launched to
remove the threat of Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD) posed by the dictatorial
rule of Saddam Hussein. The invasion phase
lasted little over a month, but the Iraq
War dragged on for years, fundamentally
changing the power balance in the Middle
East and redening US and UK foreign
policy.
The war had a huge impact on Iraq. The
Iraqi death toll is so high it can only be
estimated: the ‘Iraq Body Count’ project
estimates that between 186,694 and 210,058
civilians died. The ‘Cost of War Project’ puts
the gure at between 275,087 and 306,495
dead. The UK lost 179 military personnel in
Iraq.
The decision to join the US in invading
Iraq was the most controversial decision in
UK foreign policy of the past 40 years. The
invasion, and the subsequent occupation
of Iraq have come to dene much of the
The Iraq War:
Lessons Learned?
Two decades on from the invasion of Iraq, Chris Featherstone asks
what lessons have been learned from the most examined foreign
policy decision in British history.
New Labour legacy. Twenty years after the
invasion, the legacy of the Iraq War remains
ercely contested and uncertain. Despite
two decades’ distance, debate continues
and there is little agreement on the lessons
to be learned from Iraq.
Public Inquiries
The controversy around the Iraq War , and
especially the decision to invade, continues
to drive discussions about the lessons that
can be extracted from the Iraq War . This
controversy stems from two sources: the
process around the decision to invade, and
the impact of the decision.
The invasion of Iraq is the most
investigated foreign policy decision in
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Political Insight June 2023.indd 36Political Insight June 2023.indd 3618/05/2023 14:5918/05/2023 14:59
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